I resonated with all of this, but mostly our powerlessness and dystopian heading.
We're working on the problem from the outside, in, which is needed. But if we only keep working from the outside in, we will always be like Sisyphus.
What I'm working on is an inside, out, solution. I'm looking at the core emotion that drives people to be either brave or cowardly, to go down the path of least resistance leaving the rest of us in a chronic Sisyphus position, or to go down the more challenging path of root cause and prevention that removes the steep hill. FEAR is the core emotion we are not dealing with.
Fear can be faced and handled with courage and integrity and be our servant, or fear can rule like the selfish monarch it wants to be. When fear is our leader we become greedy for power over others. When we counter fear with wisdom, we all have power.
We would be wise to work both from the outside, in, and the inside, out, together with integrity.
We need leadership that knows how to get people working together for the benefit of both one and all with integrity.
There is one overarching poison that has been killing all these ideas for many centuries, in many cultures. Corbin, you are a smart man, and you care, so why not put the horse back in front of the cart before it flies off the cliff and crushes Wiley Coyote at the bottom.
Avarice, the obsessively addictive megalomania revolving around mammon, money, wealth, and the cringe-making destructive power it can hold when everything in creation is monetized. In the last few centuries, that translates to Capitalism, of any shade or texture.
The illogical homogenization of subjective and objective behaviors, that Object A has X value, but that Value is completely subjectively determined, not by any contextually measured and vetted process, but by this Mirage called Markets, has systematically destroyed almost all animal cultures, and threatens all plant cultures and the geologic and physical world that is their needed substrate.
The living, breathing human cultures now suffering in Gaza, for example, have been monetized, as if they were not real, hardly artifacts, whose only 'value' is the Market Wealth of the weapons and military forces unleashing them on Gazans. And almost certainly that Market sees the Gazan graveyard as a perfect golf resort.
And this one example, among thousands within the human paradigm, puts on display the wretched combo of OCD hoarding and the hoarder's indifference to any/all context(s) that create this illusionary 'power.' Humanity has built the perfect 'trap,' set it to capture all the potential answers to gut-wrenching FEAR. This fear is the driver of said Avarice, ingrained into the human population world-wide by those chronically addicted to it.
But what is/has been the outcome? Humans find their appendages crushed inside this trap of their own making/projecting/monetizing/valuing. It is no coincidence that, through the centuries, the only monetized survivors are the ilk of the avarice-laden power structures, either direct family members or the cringing sycophants who, like leeches, suckle the hindquarters of the largest tapeworm in the guts of Earth.
So I would suggest we stop all this hand wringing and fretting about our own personal illusions of what makes human life worth living, our little or huge nest eggs created out of the bowels of this gigantic Rough Beast of capitalism, of avarice, and focus on what is directly in front of us, big time, no holds barred, no exist, no escape, no passing Go for the next $200.
That would be the survival of the assaulted and enslaved planet we live on and continue to treat like a bad penny that will soon cease to exist. That would be the first step to accountability, but accounting is the third leg of the stool. First comes Trust, then Verification, then Accounting. And what of Trust? Do we trust the Earth that provides our very existence, down to the atomic/quantum level, and begin to protect, repair and revere it? Do we actually verify, which means become honest about objectivity and subjectivity and our role in creating these concept out of thin air? And can we even be honest about the Accounting, when for centuries we have used Avarice as the driver for Dishonesty, because all those shiny objects that quell all our Fears are just too addictive to tell the truth about.
It is No Coincidence that Lies overwhelm the human condition. Lies are the final stage of terminal cancer, and we cannot even look in a mirror and admit that we are all hooked on the Big Lie - that we and we alone, Create From Nothing, our own Idol of Self Perfection.
Glad you brought up the monetization of EVERYTHING, for it is INSANE.
We are insane to even allow everything to be monetized, when only that which absolutely requires monetization should be allowed. Anything else is to our detriment. Note: Thoughts not well thought out, but the gist is the same.
I think your "looking at the core emotion" is what makes you brave. The cowards are not introspective and look for someone else to blame. They are poster children for those who have succeeded in dividing us.
Ah ... blame. The go-to excuse to avoid actually identifying and solving the problem down to its root and preventive. If I could outlaw a handful of basics, blame would be at the top of my list. It is the opposite of responsibility and accountability.
I hear what you're saying about starting from within and working outward - that's part of what drew me to Marianne Williamson and her approach to spirituality and unity.
Your point about fear really got me thinking. Today I was wrestling with the question of whether any state has the "right to exist" - Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, the Ottoman Empire all ceased to exist and we don't mourn that. But then I thought about how Israel has fought for its existence through death and destruction since its inception, and it made me wonder: why are we so hell-bent on using violence and the fear of it to create space for our existence, whether as states or as people?
I think you're right that we need both approaches - the structural work from outside and the inner work on fear. One of the huge challenges we face is figuring out how to do both without losing our integrity in the process.
It's an interesting concept -- the "right" to exist as a country. America once earned its right to exist; now we're losing it. Notice what this does depend on. Humans are social creatures, with the capacity to live together in society. No one guarantees it.
Paula am in total agreement this is an "inside" job. Without overcoming fear in ourselves and bringing peace to our own minds we can't possibly see it reflected "outside". My primary focus and where my true power lies is in bringing this about now more than ever for it lifts everyone. Being a healthy cell in the body of humanity is no small thing. I am not meant to be a front line activist or funder of efforts yet I can respect and support those whose calling it is. We all have our job to do in these very difficult times. I salute yours!
Aside from reading Substack articles from a few authors like yourself and attending a few protests, I've disengaged from politics. It feels like nothing we do really matters. Prices continue to go up and most young people have accepted that they'll never own a house or afford children while watching the wealthy flaunt their lifestyle. People are truly suffering and hunted and I just don't want to watch it happen. Campaign finance reform is the solution for the true root of our problem, but I can't see a world where anyone agrees on it.
I totally get the disengagement - it's hard to keep watching when nothing seems to change and people are genuinely suffering while the wealthy flaunt their lifestyle.
The thing about campaign finance reform is it's a classic chicken-and-egg problem. We can't fix money in politics until we have enough power to make that change, but we can't build that power while money controls politics. Same with gerrymandering, voter suppression, Citizens United - all the obvious barriers.
My theory is you take whatever the moment and media give you and use it to build power around a few core things. That's why I focus on accountability, affordability, and democracy - I think they're the three threads holding our nation together, and they've all been frayed or completely broken. We're on poor footing socially, economically, and morally as a nation.
The power to make those institutional changes will come when enough people recognize these aren't separate problems but one unified breakdown.
This! It's the influence of money in politics that is at the heart of our troubles. Only if we fix that can we have a real democracy where the issues affecting everyday people will be addressed. Until then, only the wealthy have any real power.
We are long past a "crisis." The collapse of our systems of education, justice, and healthcare, our grotesque income inequality, and the evaporation of the norms on which our democracy depend are co-complicating and we are in a doom loop. We who are commenting here are preaching to the choir. I don't see us avoiding catastrophe absent overturning Citizens United, the immediate creation and success of a third party that captures the people's imagination of a better world, and dismembering the social media nightmare we've created that keeps us distracted, uninformed, and untroubled by the important things we don't want to hear or think about.
I never dreamed I would live to see a day when people were permitted to amass fortunes in the hundreds of billions of dollars while others struggled to afford healthcare, or when masked federal law enforcement officers were grabbing people off the streets and throwing them into unmarked vans and shipping them to places they've never been, or when a Jewish state could commit a blatant genocide while the western world did nothing. I think we're already living a dystopian reality, but we remain too distracted and self-siloed by our cellphones to realize it or do anything about it.
You're absolutely right about the doom loop and living in dystopian reality. What makes it even more insidious is that the collapse has been so gradual we've adjusted to it. It doesn't feel like collapse to most people.
Even in the hellscape that is Gaza - where people die just walking out their doors, where bombs are falling everywhere, where a thousand people have been killed trying to get food - there are still somehow some doctors treating people in whatever barely functional ways they can.
Meanwhile, here in America, people can still walk out their door, go to a sandwich shop, go to school - so it's easy to believe things aren't completely broken. We've baked into our expectations that justice isn't equal. We've seen Supreme Court rulings showing a sitting president is literally above the law.
It doesn't feel like crisis to most people here. It just feels normal.
And that makes mobilizing people even harder - it's tough to get them to fight against something that feels unfixable. This hopelessness isn't a bug in the system, it's a feature. The gradual nature of the collapse makes it invisible, so people adapt instead of resist.
That's why I think we need to show people a path where they can actually see change happening, not just point out how broken everything is.
The problem is that this is NOT a democracy. Check our Dr. Roslyn Fuller's three books explaining this. We are also in a mass formation--check out Mattias Desmet's "The Psychology of Totalitarianism." We solve this by mass organizing and peacefully overthrowing the ruling class. I am the director of Mosquito Revolution-- mosquitorevolution.net We built a roadmap for people to do exactly that. The roadblock we've hit is that large-audience podcasters will not respond to our emails--one has even blown me off face-to-face--twice! We need these podcasters in order to do a worldwide roll out. These are nearly all white guys, talking to other guys, about things guys do. It's time to hear from groups who have a solution to the problem so that we can start mass organizing. We only need to plant the seed for people to get going.
I totally agree this isn't a functional democracy - it's some version of oligarchy. I haven't checked out those books yet, but I appreciate you noting them.
I think the key to motivating people is giving them a path where they can see their work actually creating change. That's why we get excited every four years for presidential elections but less so for House, Senate, or local races - those feel distant and useless.
I'm not sure it's easier to mobilize people into frequent, powerful mass protests than it would be to get them to vote. Maybe protests feel more deliberate, but we've lost our footing on so many fronts. Unionization is gutted. Our ability to communicate has been diminished - using words like "Gaza" or "genocide" gets you hidden by algorithms on TikTok and other platforms.
Even though mainstream media is still on the side of the status quo, they're also on the side of money, clicks, and viewership. If you can produce content or movements they want to cover, elections are something they can understand and wrap their brains around. That might be a path to breaking through, and then those movement leaders could have enough following to call for mass mobilization.
I could be wrong, but that's my thinking on building the power first, then using it.
All of these problems can be fixed. It requires participation by those who want them. They do not come in your breakfast cereal. Participation is not just insisting on your way, it's finding agreement with your neighbors, and living a better life with them.
Corbin you are spot on. I admire how you clearly and succinctly characterize the root cause of our issues and offer viable solutions. Your reasoning is fact based and you make your case in a very accessible way - no fluff, distraction or doubletalk. I'm in a family where we are split on our political views and I can absolutely see how we want the same things. We are all good, decent people. It comes down to how the issues are framed. Fear appears to be the main driver, not facts nor reason. I appreciate your ability to relate with the pain that is prevalent and to speak with understanding and respect. You're a breath of fresh air and I firmly believe finding the common ground is what will pull us out of the trajectory we appear to be headed in. Thank you.
Thank you for your perspective. It’s thoughtful and enlightening.
That said, I see things a bit differently on two key points:
First, I don’t believe Democratic governors are silent on gerrymandering. I think some are using their power to fight fire with fire—not because they support the practice, but because it’s one of the few tools left to counter the deep silencing of progressive voices.
Second, the idea that the Epstein files—especially involving Trump and Clinton—have gone quiet doesn’t match my experience. That’s all I’m seeing in certain corners of the media right now, while more urgent systemic issues—like the slow destruction of the soul of America—get buried.
But I truly appreciate your focus on accountability, affordability, and democracy. You’re right that these are the fault lines we’re all standing on. Watching these past six months has been heartbreaking, maddening, and—on rare days—hopeful. I’m grateful you’re making space for this conversation. Looking forward to your deeper dives.
I agree with you on fighting fire with fire to some extent. That was always one of my critiques of Bernie and AOC - they wouldn't create a financial apparatus to compete with groups like AIPAC, the DCCC, and DSCC. In this moment, not having the ability to raise tens of millions for rising candidates is a fool's errand.
So I'm not saying we shouldn't consider being competitive with gerrymandering. But I think you should simultaneously be out there loudly calling it out as a problem and offering a holistic solution that fixes democracy. That's one of the things I want to dig into in the democracy piece this week.
On the Epstein files - I'm not saying they've gone quiet, but they're being used as political tools rather than for actual accountability. Right now there's one legislative tool that could actually put out the information: the discharge petition from Representatives Ro Khanna and Tom Massie. Instead, we're seeing a bunch of other less useful ideas getting pushed and covered more by the media. Both Dem and Republican leadership are stepping away from actually shedding light and restoring accountability on this specific issue.
Look out this week for two more in-depth pieces. I'll be able to give more perspective on my thoughts because it's not that I completely disagree with you - I'm more in "yes and" mode here.
america already has a higher prison population per capita than most of the countries it has called totalitarian dictatorships. Now you gave ice a budget higher than most world militaries. what little was left of public opinion, voting, and basic human rights are done for in america.
Guillotine the billionaires, and tax the shit out of the millionaires and corporations. The only way out of this mess.
If one still wants to work within a rotten system, go big or go home - HJR-54 to end corporate personhood and the money as speech absurdities. MoveToAmend.org
I'm going to get more into this in the accountability and affordability pieces this week, but here's a preview of my thinking on billionaires and wealth.
Take Elon Musk - he's projected to be the first trillionaire in about two years. Most of his wealth isn't from income, so it would take wealth taxes or other mechanisms to touch it. But here's the thing: his money comes from taking on what used to be roles of the state. Things NASA did are now done by SpaceX. Same with a lot of tech companies getting huge government contracts.
We're moving state functions - from trash collection to national security - into private hands. When a few individuals or corporations do the work of the state and get paid with federal funds, that's how you become a trillionaire.
So the way to take their money and reallocate resources isn't through taxes - it's through taking back the things that are making them billionaires in the first place. Re-ignite NASA. Create more publicly owned energy like the TVA. Rebuild the systems we used to own collectively.
Same with healthcare. We need states, cities, and the feds to own the actual means of distribution, not just insurance. Own the hospitals again. Employ the doctors and nurses again. We've subcontracted and privatized everything, and it's both despicable and ineffective.
Agree with all you say, but it’s all chicken/egg when it comes to fixing it. They became billionaires because they gained control of the tax structure, along with gutting regulation and antitrust. It was all done via purchase of the electoral system, and media.
How do you take those things back? Elections will not matter until enough people are suffering to give a damn. That only comes through war, economic depression, or climate chaos.
To make the changes you seek, to return public control to the things that should be immune from the profit motive, health care, utilities, …. elections…. etc, you have to remove undue capital/monied interests influence from the legislative process. Anything else is pissing in the wind.
I personally think it’s over. The corporate coup is complete, and overturning it will take one or more of the aforementioned three catastrophes, or millions of pitchforks in the streets.
Taking it back starts, and ends, imo, with eliminating corporate control. Without a legal means to overthrow years of Supreme Court corporate-friendly precedent, via a Constitutional Amendment, nothing gets fixed. MoveToAmend.org
What is most on my mind is rule of law because the law is being continuously broken and the Repubican lawmakers are enabling that. I do not agree with many commenting here that we are helpless. When we rise up, when we make noise, when we refuse to be silenced, we win. Over and over and over again. As the leader of an Indivisible group, what I am continually seeing, is people wanting and expecting to have the "leader" do everything, hand-hold, cajole, navigate and clear the way. That is not realistic. We have to be a naation of leaders. A nation of folks who refuse to be cut down and silenced. We are not without power but we are way too easily discouraged. RISE UP. STAND TOGETHER!
I feel frustrated about all these issues because I don't know what I can do to help fix it.
I vote and I know that should be the way to fix things. I think that has been important, I feel like that has helped a little on the local level and our state government (Connecticut) is better than many.
I'm a poll worker, I see that our voting processes are not perfect but I believe our elections have been more than good enough. If people make the effort to vote, their votes count.
I don't see a fix for our broken two party system. One national party has succeeded in getting their people elected and is now leveraging that control. The other party seems to be letting them run amuck, or if I'm more charitable they are unable to stop the Trump party.
It seems that our basic system - capitalism, needs to be modified. No one "ism" works as in isolation. We need to base our interactions and our value system on more than money. We appreciate teachers but since they can't monetize their work they don't get their fair share of resources. Bankers and monopolists can easily monitize their efforts so they feed their greed.
I want to do something that will help fix things. I don't know how to actually improve things. I'm retired so I have time and can put effort into helping but I don't have the funds to do the only thing I'm being asked to do: send money. I'm asked to send money every hour of every day! There must be something that we can do besides trying to beat the competition at there own game - they have an almost unlimited amount of money.
I have been helping locally, I would do more if I thought my efforts could make a difference.
I completely feel your frustration. I felt it before I ever worked for Bernie Sanders in 2015 when I thought Obama would be different, and I've felt it ever since. That's why I co-founded Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, why I worked as AOC's advisor and communications director until 2021. I know how hard it seems to make a difference.
One of the crazy things I experienced when I first started talking to Democratic incumbents on the Hill was how powerless they felt. I'm thinking, you're a congressperson, one of 435 people in this body, and you feel powerless? What the fuck am I supposed to feel like?
But I will say this - I've worked with Saikat Chakrabarti, who is running against Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco, for years. I also helped him work on something called the Mission for America, and I do get hope and inspiration from both him personally and his candidacy and the policy they put together. It's basically a deeper endeavor to explain how to get a Green New Deal.
What I'm trying to do right now is socialize the ideas of where we are and how we get out of this mess, while simultaneously looking for political opportunities as they arise.
I'm fortunate enough to have participated in a backyard art show last weekend (99% of artists, at least the ones I know, are liberal). It was an amazing, community event with like minded individuals who are using our hands to create art (we also created posters for and participate in Hands Off, No Kings and Good Trouble Lives On), but we used Saturday to gather and talk about non-politcal issues, for most of the day. When the subject arose in a small group of three of us, one artist said, "This is my way of countering the hatred, misogyny, lies and killing taking place in the world."
We have to give ourselves a sanity break and find in inner peace that will give us the energy to fight for what you talk about in your Substack each week. When Bernie was running, 70% of America agreed with his platform, so the ones pulling the strings are rich and powerful but a small fraction of the rest of us. Once we understand that and band together, we can make change. Thank you, Corbin, for keeping it real.
Responding to your request for feedback: "I wanna talk about three elements that I think are the root of both of those things - hope and despair. Accountability. Affordability. Democracy."
For me, affordability will follow from accountability and democracy is a complex tool for achieving accountability, so these three elements boil down to one: democracy. People's rights, responsibilities, justice/accountability, opportunity; in short, everything about how people will live together fairly - a just society - is the complex problem democracy attempts to solve.
To define the mechanics of a democratic system, a political power system, requires understanding the sources and distribution of political power because power corrupts and all human beings are susceptible to corruption. This requires understanding the human mind, especially the subconscious because we are emotional creatures, not rational. And our subconscious is vulnerable to influences outside our awareness and control. Things like propaganda and disinformation and fear mongering.
Pure democracy, equal political power sharing by all people, has never been done on a large scale. But a system that maintains or rebalances power equality in some way is probably the foundation on which anti-corruption and justice must be built. I think we have the technology to make a pure democracy viable if we have the necessary information and education structures in place.
At 71, I have been feeling the sweet sadness of melancholy for a few years. I choose hope but it is not always an easy choice. When hope seems most difficult it is easiest for me to reclaim by focusing on my own choice, my own experience in my body in that moment, not the choices or actions of others.
You hit me with one word. Powerlessness. It’s an overwhelming sense of powerlessness in the face of our power structures topped off with a disturbing realization of the absolute lack of humanity that can be bought not just with money, but with propaganda. Problems that I believe are truly quite solvable within one generation (frustratingly solvable with solutions already well understood), yet we back away further and further from it daily. It feels like being in a hole with a ladder that’s always *just* out of reach. The only thing that gives me hope is that this is all quite unsustainable, and I am sad to say, probably all necessary before we can truly brake free. People have to know they are in chains before they can brake free from them.
You may be right, but if you look at other places with less democracy, you can see that affordability and accountability are possible in better forms than we currently have. I'm not defending authoritarianism or monarchy - I'm saying the motives and values driving a system matter too. A system designed around collective welfare versus individual profit will produce different outcomes regardless of how democratic the decision-making is.
I do believe democracy is the tool that will sharpen both affordability and accountability and many other problems we face. But I think they're all intertwined. Our tendency to turn away from democracy as a tool comes from our sense of immovable injustices, rigid systems that feel unchangeable, affordability we almost feel we don't deserve, and accountability we think will never come.
We've mostly given up on electoral reforms and democracy because we haven't seen results. People need to see that democratic participation can deliver tangible improvements in their lives to restore faith in the process.
I'm not sure I agree that pure democracy should be the goal though. I've never been drawn to that idea - how many decisions would be democratic? Where do you draw the line?
It feels to me that a representative democracy could work if it were more participatory and designed to encourage participation. If our educational system instilled a love for civic engagement, and society supported that, I think representative democracy could function. Most people don't want to vote on which contractor gets the town painting project, but maybe they do want more say in bigger decisions.
I'm not ardently opposed to pure democracy, but it doesn't seem like the first solution I'd go after.
I ran for the 42nd district in 2023 in Connecticut and won. It was my first political adventure and required a lot of work and voter contact and communication. When I entered office the reality fo how crooked the system was and this is a Democratic state all around. Committee Chairs rigged what would be discussed and what would be ignored and while we would have hearing with people supporting bills another committee chair would pull the bill or decide not to vote on it based on his or hers personal view. It is not democracy.
The next election was after October 7th and I was ghosted by my local DTC and they would not support me as I had posted what they considered antisemitic material on my facebook page 12 years earlier after 4 medical missions in Gaza and the West Bank. I was sickened by democrats who also decided who and who could not be democrats.
I am not sure it would solve all the problems but changing the rules on how bills are passed at both the state and national level would be a good start to have more voting and less talking. Traitor McConnell used those rules to stop everything Obama wanted to pass and fosters and fosters an us versus them mentality.
I am retired now and have save almost 2 million dollars and have property worth an additional million and still feel financially insecure as I have seen markets collapse and money disappear before as when the bank imploded and we spent trillions bailing them out. The system is corrupt. Breaking up corporations and taxing the ultra wealthy would be a good start to fixing the issues. Stay strong, you have a vision.
Keith, thanks for sharing your firsthand experience - it really illustrates how these three issues are all connected. You experienced the accountability breakdown (committee chairs rigging what gets discussed) and the democracy breakdown (being ghosted by your own party for Gaza posts).
Your experience with committee chairs reminds me of what I found when I first started talking to Democratic incumbents on the Hill - even congresspeople felt powerless within their own system. If elected officials feel like they can't make change, no wonder people lose faith in the process.
The fact that you were punished for posting about your medical missions in Gaza twelve years ago shows exactly what I mean about accountability being dead. Speaking truth about what you witnessed as a medical volunteer becomes "antisemitic material" - that's how broken our discourse has become.
You're right about changing the rules on bill passage. The procedural stuff sounds boring, but it's how McConnell and others kill progress without even having to vote against popular policies.
Stay strong yourself - your experience in office, even for one term, gives you insights most of us don't have.
You are correct Keith. This is not a democracy--it was never meant to be. In Dr. Roslyn Fuller's three books on democracy she explains that the Founding Fathers (FF's) patterned our government after the Roman Empire's, which made no bones about the fact that it was an oligarchy. It wouldn't have been cool to be honest and call it what it is, so they called it a democratic republic--the term is an oxymoron. Dr. Fuller also shows how our votes don't count and we are NOT represented. The reason the FF's did this is because they wanted to protect their property: land stolen from Indians; slaves; wives; and children. All were legally considered property at the time. The system is working exactly as designed. We at Mosquito Revolution have a way to peacefully overthrow this god-awful oligarchy and establish true democracy--direct democracy--democracy of, by, and for the people. mosquitorevolution.net
The american empire managers wanted a Vietnam and population control on americans and jfk opposed that. The american people loved jfk and many turned on the empire through opposing the war against Vietnam. During Vietnam the empire managers helped israel during the six day war and they defeated egypt, syria, and lebanon. The empire managers got angry the american people wouldn't let them do that to Vietnam. The empire managers have hated american public opinion that cannot be manipulated ever since then.
Of course, anyone who sexually abused anyone should be held accountable. Efforts to hold Trump accountable should be conducted by the appropriate state authorities and by Congress. However, Congress is captured. I don't think the Democratic Party leaders should focus on this. (Of course, most of them should resign.)
Many people are gleeful about the prospect that Epstein-related revelations will harm Trump. It is a big distraction from focusing on the movement organizing and political messaging that can bring progress toward equality, justice, peace, and sustainability. I believe the Democrats lost the 2024 election because they did not connect well enough with tens of millions of working-class voters. Some Democratic Party leaders don’t understand the daily financial problems those voters have to live with, preferring to lecture them about “economic indicators.” The mainstream Democratic Party looks for “magic messages” that won’t piss off their billionaire funders while somehow distracting voters from reality.
Over the next several decades, we must avoid major wars with Russia and China, prevent an accidental nuclear catastrophe, transition to renewable energy and other sustainable technologies, ensure that AI is not utilized for exploitation and oppression. We must tax the rich, unwind monopolies, make it easier for workers to unionize, and reform a health care system that wastes nearly $2 trillion per year..
What can we, as individuals, and as members of progressive organizations do to keep the focus on the big goals and the lifesaving transformation that we need?
Stop watching biased news shows like CNN and MSNBC
Promote the causes: peace, climate justice, unions whenever we can
Don’t follow the Democratic Party; demand that it become truly democratic and pro-working class
Work for social justice, but don’t get caught up in virtue signalling and word policing.
Find ways to talk directly with your family, friends, and colleagues at work to promote collective action.
I resonated with all of this, but mostly our powerlessness and dystopian heading.
We're working on the problem from the outside, in, which is needed. But if we only keep working from the outside in, we will always be like Sisyphus.
What I'm working on is an inside, out, solution. I'm looking at the core emotion that drives people to be either brave or cowardly, to go down the path of least resistance leaving the rest of us in a chronic Sisyphus position, or to go down the more challenging path of root cause and prevention that removes the steep hill. FEAR is the core emotion we are not dealing with.
Fear can be faced and handled with courage and integrity and be our servant, or fear can rule like the selfish monarch it wants to be. When fear is our leader we become greedy for power over others. When we counter fear with wisdom, we all have power.
We would be wise to work both from the outside, in, and the inside, out, together with integrity.
We need leadership that knows how to get people working together for the benefit of both one and all with integrity.
We must never lose our integrity.
There is one overarching poison that has been killing all these ideas for many centuries, in many cultures. Corbin, you are a smart man, and you care, so why not put the horse back in front of the cart before it flies off the cliff and crushes Wiley Coyote at the bottom.
Avarice, the obsessively addictive megalomania revolving around mammon, money, wealth, and the cringe-making destructive power it can hold when everything in creation is monetized. In the last few centuries, that translates to Capitalism, of any shade or texture.
The illogical homogenization of subjective and objective behaviors, that Object A has X value, but that Value is completely subjectively determined, not by any contextually measured and vetted process, but by this Mirage called Markets, has systematically destroyed almost all animal cultures, and threatens all plant cultures and the geologic and physical world that is their needed substrate.
The living, breathing human cultures now suffering in Gaza, for example, have been monetized, as if they were not real, hardly artifacts, whose only 'value' is the Market Wealth of the weapons and military forces unleashing them on Gazans. And almost certainly that Market sees the Gazan graveyard as a perfect golf resort.
And this one example, among thousands within the human paradigm, puts on display the wretched combo of OCD hoarding and the hoarder's indifference to any/all context(s) that create this illusionary 'power.' Humanity has built the perfect 'trap,' set it to capture all the potential answers to gut-wrenching FEAR. This fear is the driver of said Avarice, ingrained into the human population world-wide by those chronically addicted to it.
But what is/has been the outcome? Humans find their appendages crushed inside this trap of their own making/projecting/monetizing/valuing. It is no coincidence that, through the centuries, the only monetized survivors are the ilk of the avarice-laden power structures, either direct family members or the cringing sycophants who, like leeches, suckle the hindquarters of the largest tapeworm in the guts of Earth.
So I would suggest we stop all this hand wringing and fretting about our own personal illusions of what makes human life worth living, our little or huge nest eggs created out of the bowels of this gigantic Rough Beast of capitalism, of avarice, and focus on what is directly in front of us, big time, no holds barred, no exist, no escape, no passing Go for the next $200.
That would be the survival of the assaulted and enslaved planet we live on and continue to treat like a bad penny that will soon cease to exist. That would be the first step to accountability, but accounting is the third leg of the stool. First comes Trust, then Verification, then Accounting. And what of Trust? Do we trust the Earth that provides our very existence, down to the atomic/quantum level, and begin to protect, repair and revere it? Do we actually verify, which means become honest about objectivity and subjectivity and our role in creating these concept out of thin air? And can we even be honest about the Accounting, when for centuries we have used Avarice as the driver for Dishonesty, because all those shiny objects that quell all our Fears are just too addictive to tell the truth about.
It is No Coincidence that Lies overwhelm the human condition. Lies are the final stage of terminal cancer, and we cannot even look in a mirror and admit that we are all hooked on the Big Lie - that we and we alone, Create From Nothing, our own Idol of Self Perfection.
Glad you brought up the monetization of EVERYTHING, for it is INSANE.
We are insane to even allow everything to be monetized, when only that which absolutely requires monetization should be allowed. Anything else is to our detriment. Note: Thoughts not well thought out, but the gist is the same.
I think your "looking at the core emotion" is what makes you brave. The cowards are not introspective and look for someone else to blame. They are poster children for those who have succeeded in dividing us.
Ah ... blame. The go-to excuse to avoid actually identifying and solving the problem down to its root and preventive. If I could outlaw a handful of basics, blame would be at the top of my list. It is the opposite of responsibility and accountability.
I hear what you're saying about starting from within and working outward - that's part of what drew me to Marianne Williamson and her approach to spirituality and unity.
Your point about fear really got me thinking. Today I was wrestling with the question of whether any state has the "right to exist" - Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, the Ottoman Empire all ceased to exist and we don't mourn that. But then I thought about how Israel has fought for its existence through death and destruction since its inception, and it made me wonder: why are we so hell-bent on using violence and the fear of it to create space for our existence, whether as states or as people?
I think you're right that we need both approaches - the structural work from outside and the inner work on fear. One of the huge challenges we face is figuring out how to do both without losing our integrity in the process.
It's an interesting concept -- the "right" to exist as a country. America once earned its right to exist; now we're losing it. Notice what this does depend on. Humans are social creatures, with the capacity to live together in society. No one guarantees it.
Paula am in total agreement this is an "inside" job. Without overcoming fear in ourselves and bringing peace to our own minds we can't possibly see it reflected "outside". My primary focus and where my true power lies is in bringing this about now more than ever for it lifts everyone. Being a healthy cell in the body of humanity is no small thing. I am not meant to be a front line activist or funder of efforts yet I can respect and support those whose calling it is. We all have our job to do in these very difficult times. I salute yours!
This was beautiful, thank you: "Being a healthy cell in the body of humanity is no small thing."
Aside from reading Substack articles from a few authors like yourself and attending a few protests, I've disengaged from politics. It feels like nothing we do really matters. Prices continue to go up and most young people have accepted that they'll never own a house or afford children while watching the wealthy flaunt their lifestyle. People are truly suffering and hunted and I just don't want to watch it happen. Campaign finance reform is the solution for the true root of our problem, but I can't see a world where anyone agrees on it.
I totally get the disengagement - it's hard to keep watching when nothing seems to change and people are genuinely suffering while the wealthy flaunt their lifestyle.
The thing about campaign finance reform is it's a classic chicken-and-egg problem. We can't fix money in politics until we have enough power to make that change, but we can't build that power while money controls politics. Same with gerrymandering, voter suppression, Citizens United - all the obvious barriers.
My theory is you take whatever the moment and media give you and use it to build power around a few core things. That's why I focus on accountability, affordability, and democracy - I think they're the three threads holding our nation together, and they've all been frayed or completely broken. We're on poor footing socially, economically, and morally as a nation.
The power to make those institutional changes will come when enough people recognize these aren't separate problems but one unified breakdown.
This! It's the influence of money in politics that is at the heart of our troubles. Only if we fix that can we have a real democracy where the issues affecting everyday people will be addressed. Until then, only the wealthy have any real power.
We are long past a "crisis." The collapse of our systems of education, justice, and healthcare, our grotesque income inequality, and the evaporation of the norms on which our democracy depend are co-complicating and we are in a doom loop. We who are commenting here are preaching to the choir. I don't see us avoiding catastrophe absent overturning Citizens United, the immediate creation and success of a third party that captures the people's imagination of a better world, and dismembering the social media nightmare we've created that keeps us distracted, uninformed, and untroubled by the important things we don't want to hear or think about.
I never dreamed I would live to see a day when people were permitted to amass fortunes in the hundreds of billions of dollars while others struggled to afford healthcare, or when masked federal law enforcement officers were grabbing people off the streets and throwing them into unmarked vans and shipping them to places they've never been, or when a Jewish state could commit a blatant genocide while the western world did nothing. I think we're already living a dystopian reality, but we remain too distracted and self-siloed by our cellphones to realize it or do anything about it.
You're absolutely right about the doom loop and living in dystopian reality. What makes it even more insidious is that the collapse has been so gradual we've adjusted to it. It doesn't feel like collapse to most people.
Even in the hellscape that is Gaza - where people die just walking out their doors, where bombs are falling everywhere, where a thousand people have been killed trying to get food - there are still somehow some doctors treating people in whatever barely functional ways they can.
Meanwhile, here in America, people can still walk out their door, go to a sandwich shop, go to school - so it's easy to believe things aren't completely broken. We've baked into our expectations that justice isn't equal. We've seen Supreme Court rulings showing a sitting president is literally above the law.
It doesn't feel like crisis to most people here. It just feels normal.
And that makes mobilizing people even harder - it's tough to get them to fight against something that feels unfixable. This hopelessness isn't a bug in the system, it's a feature. The gradual nature of the collapse makes it invisible, so people adapt instead of resist.
That's why I think we need to show people a path where they can actually see change happening, not just point out how broken everything is.
The problem is that this is NOT a democracy. Check our Dr. Roslyn Fuller's three books explaining this. We are also in a mass formation--check out Mattias Desmet's "The Psychology of Totalitarianism." We solve this by mass organizing and peacefully overthrowing the ruling class. I am the director of Mosquito Revolution-- mosquitorevolution.net We built a roadmap for people to do exactly that. The roadblock we've hit is that large-audience podcasters will not respond to our emails--one has even blown me off face-to-face--twice! We need these podcasters in order to do a worldwide roll out. These are nearly all white guys, talking to other guys, about things guys do. It's time to hear from groups who have a solution to the problem so that we can start mass organizing. We only need to plant the seed for people to get going.
I totally agree this isn't a functional democracy - it's some version of oligarchy. I haven't checked out those books yet, but I appreciate you noting them.
I think the key to motivating people is giving them a path where they can see their work actually creating change. That's why we get excited every four years for presidential elections but less so for House, Senate, or local races - those feel distant and useless.
I'm not sure it's easier to mobilize people into frequent, powerful mass protests than it would be to get them to vote. Maybe protests feel more deliberate, but we've lost our footing on so many fronts. Unionization is gutted. Our ability to communicate has been diminished - using words like "Gaza" or "genocide" gets you hidden by algorithms on TikTok and other platforms.
Even though mainstream media is still on the side of the status quo, they're also on the side of money, clicks, and viewership. If you can produce content or movements they want to cover, elections are something they can understand and wrap their brains around. That might be a path to breaking through, and then those movement leaders could have enough following to call for mass mobilization.
I could be wrong, but that's my thinking on building the power first, then using it.
Totally agree.
Agree
All of these problems can be fixed. It requires participation by those who want them. They do not come in your breakfast cereal. Participation is not just insisting on your way, it's finding agreement with your neighbors, and living a better life with them.
Corbin you are spot on. I admire how you clearly and succinctly characterize the root cause of our issues and offer viable solutions. Your reasoning is fact based and you make your case in a very accessible way - no fluff, distraction or doubletalk. I'm in a family where we are split on our political views and I can absolutely see how we want the same things. We are all good, decent people. It comes down to how the issues are framed. Fear appears to be the main driver, not facts nor reason. I appreciate your ability to relate with the pain that is prevalent and to speak with understanding and respect. You're a breath of fresh air and I firmly believe finding the common ground is what will pull us out of the trajectory we appear to be headed in. Thank you.
Thank you for your perspective. It’s thoughtful and enlightening.
That said, I see things a bit differently on two key points:
First, I don’t believe Democratic governors are silent on gerrymandering. I think some are using their power to fight fire with fire—not because they support the practice, but because it’s one of the few tools left to counter the deep silencing of progressive voices.
Second, the idea that the Epstein files—especially involving Trump and Clinton—have gone quiet doesn’t match my experience. That’s all I’m seeing in certain corners of the media right now, while more urgent systemic issues—like the slow destruction of the soul of America—get buried.
But I truly appreciate your focus on accountability, affordability, and democracy. You’re right that these are the fault lines we’re all standing on. Watching these past six months has been heartbreaking, maddening, and—on rare days—hopeful. I’m grateful you’re making space for this conversation. Looking forward to your deeper dives.
I agree with you on fighting fire with fire to some extent. That was always one of my critiques of Bernie and AOC - they wouldn't create a financial apparatus to compete with groups like AIPAC, the DCCC, and DSCC. In this moment, not having the ability to raise tens of millions for rising candidates is a fool's errand.
So I'm not saying we shouldn't consider being competitive with gerrymandering. But I think you should simultaneously be out there loudly calling it out as a problem and offering a holistic solution that fixes democracy. That's one of the things I want to dig into in the democracy piece this week.
On the Epstein files - I'm not saying they've gone quiet, but they're being used as political tools rather than for actual accountability. Right now there's one legislative tool that could actually put out the information: the discharge petition from Representatives Ro Khanna and Tom Massie. Instead, we're seeing a bunch of other less useful ideas getting pushed and covered more by the media. Both Dem and Republican leadership are stepping away from actually shedding light and restoring accountability on this specific issue.
Look out this week for two more in-depth pieces. I'll be able to give more perspective on my thoughts because it's not that I completely disagree with you - I'm more in "yes and" mode here.
america already has a higher prison population per capita than most of the countries it has called totalitarian dictatorships. Now you gave ice a budget higher than most world militaries. what little was left of public opinion, voting, and basic human rights are done for in america.
Agree
Guillotine the billionaires, and tax the shit out of the millionaires and corporations. The only way out of this mess.
If one still wants to work within a rotten system, go big or go home - HJR-54 to end corporate personhood and the money as speech absurdities. MoveToAmend.org
I'm going to get more into this in the accountability and affordability pieces this week, but here's a preview of my thinking on billionaires and wealth.
Take Elon Musk - he's projected to be the first trillionaire in about two years. Most of his wealth isn't from income, so it would take wealth taxes or other mechanisms to touch it. But here's the thing: his money comes from taking on what used to be roles of the state. Things NASA did are now done by SpaceX. Same with a lot of tech companies getting huge government contracts.
We're moving state functions - from trash collection to national security - into private hands. When a few individuals or corporations do the work of the state and get paid with federal funds, that's how you become a trillionaire.
So the way to take their money and reallocate resources isn't through taxes - it's through taking back the things that are making them billionaires in the first place. Re-ignite NASA. Create more publicly owned energy like the TVA. Rebuild the systems we used to own collectively.
Same with healthcare. We need states, cities, and the feds to own the actual means of distribution, not just insurance. Own the hospitals again. Employ the doctors and nurses again. We've subcontracted and privatized everything, and it's both despicable and ineffective.
Agree with all you say, but it’s all chicken/egg when it comes to fixing it. They became billionaires because they gained control of the tax structure, along with gutting regulation and antitrust. It was all done via purchase of the electoral system, and media.
How do you take those things back? Elections will not matter until enough people are suffering to give a damn. That only comes through war, economic depression, or climate chaos.
To make the changes you seek, to return public control to the things that should be immune from the profit motive, health care, utilities, …. elections…. etc, you have to remove undue capital/monied interests influence from the legislative process. Anything else is pissing in the wind.
I personally think it’s over. The corporate coup is complete, and overturning it will take one or more of the aforementioned three catastrophes, or millions of pitchforks in the streets.
Taking it back starts, and ends, imo, with eliminating corporate control. Without a legal means to overthrow years of Supreme Court corporate-friendly precedent, via a Constitutional Amendment, nothing gets fixed. MoveToAmend.org
What is most on my mind is rule of law because the law is being continuously broken and the Repubican lawmakers are enabling that. I do not agree with many commenting here that we are helpless. When we rise up, when we make noise, when we refuse to be silenced, we win. Over and over and over again. As the leader of an Indivisible group, what I am continually seeing, is people wanting and expecting to have the "leader" do everything, hand-hold, cajole, navigate and clear the way. That is not realistic. We have to be a naation of leaders. A nation of folks who refuse to be cut down and silenced. We are not without power but we are way too easily discouraged. RISE UP. STAND TOGETHER!
I feel frustrated about all these issues because I don't know what I can do to help fix it.
I vote and I know that should be the way to fix things. I think that has been important, I feel like that has helped a little on the local level and our state government (Connecticut) is better than many.
I'm a poll worker, I see that our voting processes are not perfect but I believe our elections have been more than good enough. If people make the effort to vote, their votes count.
I don't see a fix for our broken two party system. One national party has succeeded in getting their people elected and is now leveraging that control. The other party seems to be letting them run amuck, or if I'm more charitable they are unable to stop the Trump party.
It seems that our basic system - capitalism, needs to be modified. No one "ism" works as in isolation. We need to base our interactions and our value system on more than money. We appreciate teachers but since they can't monetize their work they don't get their fair share of resources. Bankers and monopolists can easily monitize their efforts so they feed their greed.
I want to do something that will help fix things. I don't know how to actually improve things. I'm retired so I have time and can put effort into helping but I don't have the funds to do the only thing I'm being asked to do: send money. I'm asked to send money every hour of every day! There must be something that we can do besides trying to beat the competition at there own game - they have an almost unlimited amount of money.
I have been helping locally, I would do more if I thought my efforts could make a difference.
I completely feel your frustration. I felt it before I ever worked for Bernie Sanders in 2015 when I thought Obama would be different, and I've felt it ever since. That's why I co-founded Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, why I worked as AOC's advisor and communications director until 2021. I know how hard it seems to make a difference.
One of the crazy things I experienced when I first started talking to Democratic incumbents on the Hill was how powerless they felt. I'm thinking, you're a congressperson, one of 435 people in this body, and you feel powerless? What the fuck am I supposed to feel like?
But I will say this - I've worked with Saikat Chakrabarti, who is running against Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco, for years. I also helped him work on something called the Mission for America, and I do get hope and inspiration from both him personally and his candidacy and the policy they put together. It's basically a deeper endeavor to explain how to get a Green New Deal.
What I'm trying to do right now is socialize the ideas of where we are and how we get out of this mess, while simultaneously looking for political opportunities as they arise.
So I say stay hopeful, stay cautious, stay skeptical but not cynical. And check out Saikat's website (https://www.saikat.us/en) and the Mission for America (https://www.newconsensus.com/mfa).
This resonates with how I’ve been feeling… he nailed it when he said we’re feeling a sense of powerlessness and some hope.
The solution? Mosquito Revolution--- mosquitorevolution.net
I'm fortunate enough to have participated in a backyard art show last weekend (99% of artists, at least the ones I know, are liberal). It was an amazing, community event with like minded individuals who are using our hands to create art (we also created posters for and participate in Hands Off, No Kings and Good Trouble Lives On), but we used Saturday to gather and talk about non-politcal issues, for most of the day. When the subject arose in a small group of three of us, one artist said, "This is my way of countering the hatred, misogyny, lies and killing taking place in the world."
We have to give ourselves a sanity break and find in inner peace that will give us the energy to fight for what you talk about in your Substack each week. When Bernie was running, 70% of America agreed with his platform, so the ones pulling the strings are rich and powerful but a small fraction of the rest of us. Once we understand that and band together, we can make change. Thank you, Corbin, for keeping it real.
Thank you
Hi Corbin,
Responding to your request for feedback: "I wanna talk about three elements that I think are the root of both of those things - hope and despair. Accountability. Affordability. Democracy."
For me, affordability will follow from accountability and democracy is a complex tool for achieving accountability, so these three elements boil down to one: democracy. People's rights, responsibilities, justice/accountability, opportunity; in short, everything about how people will live together fairly - a just society - is the complex problem democracy attempts to solve.
To define the mechanics of a democratic system, a political power system, requires understanding the sources and distribution of political power because power corrupts and all human beings are susceptible to corruption. This requires understanding the human mind, especially the subconscious because we are emotional creatures, not rational. And our subconscious is vulnerable to influences outside our awareness and control. Things like propaganda and disinformation and fear mongering.
Pure democracy, equal political power sharing by all people, has never been done on a large scale. But a system that maintains or rebalances power equality in some way is probably the foundation on which anti-corruption and justice must be built. I think we have the technology to make a pure democracy viable if we have the necessary information and education structures in place.
At 71, I have been feeling the sweet sadness of melancholy for a few years. I choose hope but it is not always an easy choice. When hope seems most difficult it is easiest for me to reclaim by focusing on my own choice, my own experience in my body in that moment, not the choices or actions of others.
I look forward to reading what you come up with.
You hit me with one word. Powerlessness. It’s an overwhelming sense of powerlessness in the face of our power structures topped off with a disturbing realization of the absolute lack of humanity that can be bought not just with money, but with propaganda. Problems that I believe are truly quite solvable within one generation (frustratingly solvable with solutions already well understood), yet we back away further and further from it daily. It feels like being in a hole with a ladder that’s always *just* out of reach. The only thing that gives me hope is that this is all quite unsustainable, and I am sad to say, probably all necessary before we can truly brake free. People have to know they are in chains before they can brake free from them.
You may be right, but if you look at other places with less democracy, you can see that affordability and accountability are possible in better forms than we currently have. I'm not defending authoritarianism or monarchy - I'm saying the motives and values driving a system matter too. A system designed around collective welfare versus individual profit will produce different outcomes regardless of how democratic the decision-making is.
I do believe democracy is the tool that will sharpen both affordability and accountability and many other problems we face. But I think they're all intertwined. Our tendency to turn away from democracy as a tool comes from our sense of immovable injustices, rigid systems that feel unchangeable, affordability we almost feel we don't deserve, and accountability we think will never come.
We've mostly given up on electoral reforms and democracy because we haven't seen results. People need to see that democratic participation can deliver tangible improvements in their lives to restore faith in the process.
I'm not sure I agree that pure democracy should be the goal though. I've never been drawn to that idea - how many decisions would be democratic? Where do you draw the line?
It feels to me that a representative democracy could work if it were more participatory and designed to encourage participation. If our educational system instilled a love for civic engagement, and society supported that, I think representative democracy could function. Most people don't want to vote on which contractor gets the town painting project, but maybe they do want more say in bigger decisions.
I'm not ardently opposed to pure democracy, but it doesn't seem like the first solution I'd go after.
Mr. Corbet,
I ran for the 42nd district in 2023 in Connecticut and won. It was my first political adventure and required a lot of work and voter contact and communication. When I entered office the reality fo how crooked the system was and this is a Democratic state all around. Committee Chairs rigged what would be discussed and what would be ignored and while we would have hearing with people supporting bills another committee chair would pull the bill or decide not to vote on it based on his or hers personal view. It is not democracy.
The next election was after October 7th and I was ghosted by my local DTC and they would not support me as I had posted what they considered antisemitic material on my facebook page 12 years earlier after 4 medical missions in Gaza and the West Bank. I was sickened by democrats who also decided who and who could not be democrats.
I am not sure it would solve all the problems but changing the rules on how bills are passed at both the state and national level would be a good start to have more voting and less talking. Traitor McConnell used those rules to stop everything Obama wanted to pass and fosters and fosters an us versus them mentality.
I am retired now and have save almost 2 million dollars and have property worth an additional million and still feel financially insecure as I have seen markets collapse and money disappear before as when the bank imploded and we spent trillions bailing them out. The system is corrupt. Breaking up corporations and taxing the ultra wealthy would be a good start to fixing the issues. Stay strong, you have a vision.
Keith
I
Keith, thanks for sharing your firsthand experience - it really illustrates how these three issues are all connected. You experienced the accountability breakdown (committee chairs rigging what gets discussed) and the democracy breakdown (being ghosted by your own party for Gaza posts).
Your experience with committee chairs reminds me of what I found when I first started talking to Democratic incumbents on the Hill - even congresspeople felt powerless within their own system. If elected officials feel like they can't make change, no wonder people lose faith in the process.
The fact that you were punished for posting about your medical missions in Gaza twelve years ago shows exactly what I mean about accountability being dead. Speaking truth about what you witnessed as a medical volunteer becomes "antisemitic material" - that's how broken our discourse has become.
You're right about changing the rules on bill passage. The procedural stuff sounds boring, but it's how McConnell and others kill progress without even having to vote against popular policies.
Stay strong yourself - your experience in office, even for one term, gives you insights most of us don't have.
You are correct Keith. This is not a democracy--it was never meant to be. In Dr. Roslyn Fuller's three books on democracy she explains that the Founding Fathers (FF's) patterned our government after the Roman Empire's, which made no bones about the fact that it was an oligarchy. It wouldn't have been cool to be honest and call it what it is, so they called it a democratic republic--the term is an oxymoron. Dr. Fuller also shows how our votes don't count and we are NOT represented. The reason the FF's did this is because they wanted to protect their property: land stolen from Indians; slaves; wives; and children. All were legally considered property at the time. The system is working exactly as designed. We at Mosquito Revolution have a way to peacefully overthrow this god-awful oligarchy and establish true democracy--direct democracy--democracy of, by, and for the people. mosquitorevolution.net
The american empire managers wanted a Vietnam and population control on americans and jfk opposed that. The american people loved jfk and many turned on the empire through opposing the war against Vietnam. During Vietnam the empire managers helped israel during the six day war and they defeated egypt, syria, and lebanon. The empire managers got angry the american people wouldn't let them do that to Vietnam. The empire managers have hated american public opinion that cannot be manipulated ever since then.
Of course, anyone who sexually abused anyone should be held accountable. Efforts to hold Trump accountable should be conducted by the appropriate state authorities and by Congress. However, Congress is captured. I don't think the Democratic Party leaders should focus on this. (Of course, most of them should resign.)
Many people are gleeful about the prospect that Epstein-related revelations will harm Trump. It is a big distraction from focusing on the movement organizing and political messaging that can bring progress toward equality, justice, peace, and sustainability. I believe the Democrats lost the 2024 election because they did not connect well enough with tens of millions of working-class voters. Some Democratic Party leaders don’t understand the daily financial problems those voters have to live with, preferring to lecture them about “economic indicators.” The mainstream Democratic Party looks for “magic messages” that won’t piss off their billionaire funders while somehow distracting voters from reality.
Over the next several decades, we must avoid major wars with Russia and China, prevent an accidental nuclear catastrophe, transition to renewable energy and other sustainable technologies, ensure that AI is not utilized for exploitation and oppression. We must tax the rich, unwind monopolies, make it easier for workers to unionize, and reform a health care system that wastes nearly $2 trillion per year..
What can we, as individuals, and as members of progressive organizations do to keep the focus on the big goals and the lifesaving transformation that we need?
Stop watching biased news shows like CNN and MSNBC
Promote the causes: peace, climate justice, unions whenever we can
Don’t follow the Democratic Party; demand that it become truly democratic and pro-working class
Work for social justice, but don’t get caught up in virtue signalling and word policing.
Find ways to talk directly with your family, friends, and colleagues at work to promote collective action.